Past

The immune system finds very rare amounts of pathogens and responds against them in a timely and efficient manner. The time to find and respond against pathogens does not vary appreciably with the size of the host animal (scale invariant search and response). This is surprising since the search and response against pathogens is harder in larger animals.

The first part of the talk will focus on using techniques from computer science to solve problems in immunology, specifically how the immune system achieves scale invariant search and response. I use machine learning techniques, ordinary differential equation models and spatially explicit agent based models to understand the dynamics of the immune system. I will talk about Hierarchical Bayesian non-linear mixed effects models to simulate immune response in different species.

The second part of the talk will focus on taking inspiration from the immune system to solve problems in computer science. I will talk about a model that describes the optimal architecture of the immune system and then show how architectures and strategies inspired by the immune system can be used to create distributed systems with faster search and response characteristics.

I argue that techniques from computer science can be applied to the immune system and that the immune system can provide valuable inspiration for robust computing in human engineered distributed systems.

Let A be an abelian variety over a strictly henselian discretely valued field K. In his 1992 paper "Néron models and tame ramification", Edixhoven has constructed a filtration on the special fiber of the Néron model of A that measures the behaviour of the Néron model with respect to tamely ramified extensions of K. The filtration is indexed by rational numbers in [0,1], and if A is wildly ramified, it is an open problem whether the places where it jumps are always rational. I will explain how an interpretation of the filtration in terms of logarithmic geometry leads to explicit formulas for the jumps in the case where A is a Jacobian, which confirms in particular that they are rational. This is joint work with Dennis Eriksson and Lars Halvard Halle.

We propose a new flexible unified framework for studying the time consistency property suited for a large class of maps defined on the set of all cash flows and that are postulated to satisfy only two properties -- monotonicity and locality. This framework integrates the existing forms of time consistency for dynamic risk measures and dynamic performance measures (also known as acceptability indices). The time consistency is defined in terms of an update rule, a novel notion that would be discussed into details and illustrated through various examples. Finally, we will present some connections between existing popular forms of time consistency. 
This is a joint work with Tomasz R. Bielecki and Marcin Pitera.

(joint work with Sergei Starchenko)

Let p:C^n ->A be the covering map of a complex abelian variety and let X be an algebraic variety of C^n, or more generally a definable set in an o-minimal expansion of the real field. Ullmo and Yafaev investigated the topological closure of p(X) in A in the above two  settings and conjectured that the frontier of p(X) can be described, when X is algebraic as finitely many cosets of real sub tori of A, They proved the conjecture when dim X=1. They make a similar conjecture for X definable in an o-minimal structure.

In recent work we show that the above conjecture fails as stated, and prove a modified version,  describing the frontier of p(X) as finitely many families of cosets of subtori. We prove a similar result when X is a definable set in an o-minimal structure and p:R^n-> T is the covering map of a real torus.  The proofs use model theory of o-minimal structures as well as algebraically closed valued fields.

Tim Harford, Financial Times columnist and presenter of Radio 4's "More or Less", argues that politicians, businesses and even charities have been poisoning the value of statistics and data. Tim will argue that we need to defend the value of good data in public discourse, and will suggest how to lead the defence of statistical truth-telling.

Please email @email to register 

The character variety of a manifold is a moduli space of representations of its fundamental group into some fixed gauge group.  In this talk I will outline the construction of a fully extended topological field theory in dimension 4, which gives a uniform functorial quantization of the character varieties of low-dimensional manifolds, when the gauge group is reductive algebraic (e.g. $GL_N$).

I'll focus on important examples in representation theory arising from the construction, in genus 1:  spherical double affine Hecke algebras (DAHA), difference-operator q-deformations of the Grothendieck-Springer sheaf, and the construction of irreducible DAHA modules mimicking techniques in classical geometric representation theory.  The general constructions are joint with David Ben-Zvi, Adrien Brochier, and Noah Snyder, and applications to representation theory of DAHA are joint with Martina Balagovic and Monica Vazirani.

In a recent breakthrough, Peter Keevash proved the Existence conjecture for combinatorial designs, which has its roots in the 19th century. In joint work with Daniela Kühn, Allan Lo and Deryk Osthus, we gave a new proof of this result, based on the method of iterative absorption. In fact, `regularity boosting’ allows us to extend our main decomposition result beyond the quasirandom setting and thus to generalise the results of Keevash. In particular, we obtain a resilience version and a minimum degree version. In this talk, we will present our new results within a brief outline of the history of the Existence conjecture and provide an overview of the proof.

We give an overview of joint work with Lewis Topley on modular W-algebras. In particular, we outline the classification 1-dimensional modules for modular W-algebras for gl_n, which in turn this leads to a classification of minimal dimensional modules for reduced enveloping algebras for gl_n.

An essential ingredient of AdS/CFT, dS/CFT and other dualities is a geometric notion of scattering that refers to asymptotics rather than, say, infinite time limits. Though one expects non-perturbative versions to exist in the case of linear quantum fields (and non-linear classical fields), this has been rigorously implemented in Lorentzian settings only relatively recently. The goal of this talk will be to give an overview in different geometrical setups, including asymptotically Minkowski, de Sitter and Anti-de Sitter spacetimes. In particular I will discuss recent results on classical scattering and particle interpretations, compare them with the setup of conformal scattering and explain how they can be used to construct "in-out" Feynman propagators (based on joint works with Christian Gérard and András Vasy).

In this talk, we will discuss sequences of immersions from 2-discs into Euclidean with finite total curvature where the Willmore energy converges to zero (a minimal surface). We will show that away from finitely many concentration points of the total curvature, the surface converges strongly in $W^{2,2}$.  Furthermore, we have an energy identity for the total curvature, at the concentration points after a blow-up procedure we show that there is a bubble tree consisting of complete non-compact (branched) minimal surfaces of finite total curvature which are quantised in multiples of 4\pi. We will also apply this method to the mean curvature flow, showing that sequences of surfaces that are locally converging to a self-shrinker in L^2 also develop a bubble tree of complete non-compact (branched) minimal surfaces in Euclidean space with finite total curvature quantised in multiples of 4\pi. 

 I will give a light introduction to the theory of regularity structures and then discuss recent developments with regards to renormalization within the theory - in particular I will describe joint work with Martin Hairer where multiscale techniques from constructive field theory are adapted to provide a systematic method of obtaining needed stochastic estimates for the theory. 

Given two actions of a group $G$ on trees $T_1,T_2$, Guirardel introduced the "core", a $G$--cocompact CAT(0) subspace of $T_1\times
T_2$.  The covolume of the core is a natural notion of "intersection number" for the two tree actions (for example, if $G$ is a surface group
and $T_1,T_2$ are Bass-Serre trees associated to splittings along some curves, this "intersection number" is the one you'd expect).  We
generalise this construction by considering a fixed finitely-presented group $G$ equipped with finitely many essential, cocompact actions on
CAT(0) cube complexes $X_1,...,X_d$.  Inside $X=X_1\times ... \times X_d$, we find a $G$--invariant subcomplex $C$ which, although not convex
or necessarily CAT(0), has each component isometrically embedded with respect to the $\ell_1$ metric on $X$ (the key point is this change from
the CAT(0) to the $\ell_1$ viewpoint).  In the case where $d=2$ and $X_1,X_2$ are simplicial trees, $C$ is the Guirardel core.  Many
features of the Guirardel core generalise, and I will summarise these. For example, if the cubulations $G\to Aut(X_i)$ are "essentially
different", then $C$ is connected and $G$--cocompact.  Time permitting, I will discuss an application, namely a new proof of Nielsen realisation
for finite subgroups of $Out(F_n)$.  This talk is based on ongoing joint work with Henry Wilton.

Abstract: Equations with small scales abound in physics and applied science. When the coefficients vary on microscopic scales, the local fluctuations average out under certain assumptions and we have the so-called homogenization phenomenon. In this talk, I will try to explain some probabilistic approaches we use to obtain the first order random fluctuations in stochastic homogenization. If homogenization is to be viewed as a law of large number type result, here we are looking for a central limit theorem. The tools we use include the Kipnis-Varadhan's method, a quantitative martingale central limit theorem and the Stein's method. Based on joint work with Jean-Christophe Mourrat. 

 The Sen conjecture, made in 1994, makes precise predictions about the existence of L^2 harmonic forms on the monopole moduli spaces. For each positive integer k, the moduli space M_k of monopoles of charge k is a non-compact smooth manifold of dimension 4k, carrying a natural hyperkaehler metric.  Thus studying Sen’s conjectures requires a good understanding of the asymptotic structure of M_k and its metric.  This is a challenging analytical problem, because of the non-compactness of M_k and because its asymptotic structure is at least as complicated as the partitions of k.  For k=2, the metric was written down explicitly by Atiyah and Hitchin, and partial results are known in other cases.  In this talk, I shall introduce the main characters in this story and describe recent work aimed at proving Sen’s conjecture.

Recently, millions of novel examples of compact G2 holonomy manifolds have been constructed as twisted connected sums of asymptotically cylindrical Calabi-Yau threefolds. In case these are K3 fibred, they can in turn be constructed from dual pairs of tops. This is analogous to Batyrev's construction of Calabi-Yau manifolds via reflexive polytopes. For compactifications of Type II superstrings on such G2 manifolds, we formulate a construction of the mirror.

Featuring
Peter Grindrod, Director of the Oxford-Emirates Data Science Lab, Oxford Mathematical Institute

Geraint Lloyd, Senior Software Engineer, Schlumberger

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Mick Pont, VP Research and Development, Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG)

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Anna Railton, Technical Staff, Smith Institute

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Michele Taroni, Senior Project Manager, Roxar

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